UN launches flash appeal in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan

On Tuesday this week, the United Nations launched an appeal requesting US$301 million in response to the devastating typhoon, which hit the Philippines on Friday 8th of November, the most severe typhoon to make landfall in recorded history.

The extent of death toll is still unknown. The latest estimates from UNOCHA total the number of affected at 11.3 million, and the number of displaced people at 673 million. This is in addition to those affected and displaced by the typhoon Bopha in December 2012, the ongoing conflict in Mindano’ and the recent earthquake in Bohol.

As of today, November 14, US$98 million has been reported to UN OCHA’s Financial tracking system (FTS) in response to the typhoon. Of this total US$49 million has been allocated to the UN appeal thus far. The remainder has not been allocated to the appeal and is represented in the below graph as funding outside the appeal. UNOCHA reports a further US$52 million in uncommitted pledges from 16 different countries. The FTS defines an ‘uncommitted pledge’ as a non-binding announcement of an intended contribution or allocation by the donor.

Figure 1: Funding and pledges in response to Typhoon Haiyan

Source: UNOCHA FTS

The largest donors to date have been the UK (US$24 million), the United States (US$21 million), Denmark (US$7 million) and the European Commission (US$4 million). The UN has released US$25 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

Table 1: Funding reported to the FTS, inside and outside the appeal

Source: UNOCHA FTS

Figure 2: Donors uncommitted pledges for the Philippines

Source: UNOCHA FTS

UN flash appeals divide requirements against designated clusters aimed at improving co-ordination and channelling sufficient financial resources to specific sectors. So far the US$14 million has been directed to food and security, US$3 million to emergency shelter, US$3 million to emergency education and US$1 million to WASH. For the remaining US$29 million the cluster is yet to be specified, but we can anticipate the remaining funding will be directed to the other sectors in the coming days and weeks.

Table 2: Funding requirements for UN clusters

Source: UNOCHA FTS

All data in the above figures and tables were downloaded on the 14 November 2013. These figures are all available to download on the UNOCHA FTS website.

The GHA programme will continue to update and deepen this financial analysis as the response to the Philippines crisis evolves. For the coming weeks we will be updating information on this blog site regularly.